At 11:50 PM 7/23/2005, Ed Storms wrote:
I think people in the CF field know and appreciate that two separate
issues are important to the field. The first addresses whether the CF
effect is real or not, and the second addresses whether commercially
useful energy can be produced. It is clear that the effect is real, but
it is not yet clear whether useful energy can be made. A few watts in a
laboratory does not count when addressing the second issue, which is the
thrust of the NG article. Most laboratory devices can not be scaled up in
their present form. Until the effect can be produced near the kilowatt
level on demand, the phenomenon can not be considered useful. Of course,
this fact does not justify rejection of the claims as is common these
days. I might add that the same criteria should be applied to hot
fusion. In this case, the method is not useful unless excess power is in
above megawatts because the size of the device is so large.
Ed
With all due respect, Ed Storms is wrong two ways.
First, utility is dependent upon location and availability. Although
Storms' very low level less-reproducible devices are not useful
as he states, others' cold fusion devices are higher power and higher
reproducibility, and do appear to be useful.
Utility is in the 'eyes of the beholder' As example, the Rover on Mars has
a power dissipation of circa 50 watts.
Therefore, 50 or 100 watts excess energy converted to electricity using
cold fusion might increase project longevity
or in situ system availability by a factor of 50-100%. That is GREAT
utility, and is only one example.
Also, corroborating this, we have made electricity for years using cold
fusion systems [since before our
first report in Fusion Facts (Hal Fox, editor) a decade ago when a small
light bulb first turned on by CF,
and have shown clear excess energy demonstrated both by temperature rise
AND by electricity generation
in subsequent systems. This electrical generation is important because
it has utility at least two ways.
These cold fusion electric conversion systems have GREAT utility both for
convincing skeptics (beyond the simple temperature
rise of the MIT Demo shown at ICCF 10) AND for new useful products (e.g. as
discussed above, briefly).
Second, our realization that cold fusion is real and reproducible has
directly paralleled the generation of
useful excess electrical energy, especially in the prism of increasing in
excess power density.
Therefore, the "two separate issues" appear to not be separate but rather
appear to be linked
[perhaps in a way as are electrical conduction and electrical polarization
through Hilbert space].
Mitchell Swartz
==============================================================
Update of Cold Fusion Times
http://world.std.com/~mica/cft.html
also http://world.std.com/~mica/cftrev12-2.html
