Mary Yugo <maryyu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There are a lot of these claims, aren't there? >> >> > Yes and so far, all have been scams or failures or both. > Untrue. The Curies' claim of anomalous energy was not a failure. Muon-catalyzed fusion and the fusor are real, and I expect Taleyarkhan's sono fusion is real. It probably does not produce significant heat. If you mean unconventional claims made after 1960 or so, most have been failures, with the possible exception of the Hydrodynamics gadget. As far as I can tell that really does work. It was tested with the best instrumentation Georgia Tech. can recommend, and it apparently produced significant excess heat, albeit not enough to have any commercial significance. I have no idea how many have been scams. I don't keep track of that. The fact all those other claims failed has no bearing on cold fusion. Their failure did not reduce the likelihood that cold fusion is real. Those other claims are technically unrelated to cold fusion, in that they employ magnets and things like that, and not hydrides or deuterides. As many people have pointed out, all attempts to fly before the Wright brothers failed, but that did not mean the Wrights did not fly. It did not call into question their results. In the technical sense that is correct. In the real world people at the time did doubt the Wrights flew because there have been a number of failed attempts previously, especially Langley's. Actually, the closer you look at that particular example the more complicated it becomes. Several people, such as Maxim, put propellers on flying machines and took off long before December 17, 1903, but that was not controlled flight. From an engineering point of view the Wrights indisputable were the first to achieve controlled flight. No one came even close to them previously. There were precursor events in the history of cold fusion, such as Mizuno's observation of anomalous heat in in palladium deuteride. But I think it is fair to say that Fleischmann and Pons have indisputable priority. Mizuno himself agrees. Arata has undisputed priority for the nano-particle gas loading approach. Celani, Rossi and others followed him. This would be true even if it turns out Rossi was unaware of Arata. I doubt he was unaware. He seems to know a lot about the field. A good experimentalist learns all about what other people have done before plunging in. - Jed
