7 replies to this topic

[Chip]

Got my copy of Phenomenon; The Lost Archives, Heavey Watergate (2000) today from Blockbuster online for about $12. You get to see numerous experimental set ups where excess heat and helium production is claimed (hot enough to boil the water).

Dr. Bob Bush who worked with Dr. Edmund Storms conducting experiments into cold fusion (CF hereafter) at Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico states in person, “We were seeing this marvelous effect of excess power and integrated over time, excess heat in our own laboratories so it wasn’t as if we had to take somebody else’s word for it. We had proved it. The conclusion was that the amount of palladium that you could fit on your thumb would be enough to produce a reactor that would supply the city of Los Angeles with all their power needs.” Dr. Storms also offers much testimony.

Just after Fleischman & Pons (F & P hereafter) came forth with their claims and Texas A & M University’s Dr. John Brockis announced confirmation of finding excess heat as well as tritium using similar experiments as F & P, President George Bush Sr. appointed a panel of 22 expert scientists to look into the matter. They conducted experiments and deduced that nothing was happening. Afterward, two of the panel approached Dr. Storms seeking funding to conduct further research. In other words, though they had testified that it was without merit, these two remained unconvinced attesting to the very real possibility that the congressional testimony made in congress by the panel denouncing F & P’s experiments was stretching the truth. The result of the panel’s testimony to congress was that all federal funding for any such research was curtailed, papers describing such were denied publishing in major journals and patents for technology claiming such results were not even considered. This is the state of federal and associated journals (AAAS) involvement to this day.

Both the graph of the raw data and the graph presented in MIT’s official report are shown in the film (side by side and overlaid) and you can clearly see how the data was altered to negate the findings of F & P. Dr. Charles Vest, president of MIT at the time ran an investigation into the claim that the data was misrepresented. He was concurrently a member of the White House advisory panel for the funding of hot fusion. He concluded that the data was not altered. Engineer and chief science journalist for MIT, Eugene Mallove (who is now the editor for Infinite Energy magazine, http://www.infinite-energy.com) resigned in protest. Immediately afterward, MIT received massive funding for its hot fusion research. Still Dr. P. Hagelstein of MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics continued experimenting with CF for the next decade and as of the time of this documentary.

Gary Taubes (sp?), a science journalist, had a paper published in Science denouncing the Texas A & M confirmation of F & P’s findings as fraudulent, going so far as to claim the experiments had been spiked with tritium for that additional claim as well as the excess heat. Taubes allegations of fraud were eventually proved false. Texas A & M considered firing Brockis and conducted their own investigation where they exonerated him of all of these false charges.

Concerning CETI, Motorola conducted experiments of their own using the nickel-palladium beads of CETI’s design and confirmed production of excess heat which lead to Motorola planning to buy out CETI, a private company seeking to commercialize
CF technology. Other experiments using CETI designs did not pan out and Motorola eventually dropped their takeover plans.

Dr. Kevin Wolf, physicist at Texas A & M University found evidence of silicon, iron, copper, zinc and gold having been produced by CF cells. Researchers at Okaido University in Japan also found transmutation and production of elements “from iron to platinum” along with excess heat.

Dean Stockwell reports that by 1999 thousands of papers in peer reviewed scientific journals had been published. In 1999 the Department of Energy awarded a grant to Professor George Miley to study the transmutation of nuclear wastes via CF cells but the grant was retracted within a couple of months upon advice by a panel including Dr. John Huzeinga, who was on the original 22 member panel and is adamant about any claims of CF being pathological science. The film brought forth evidence, one here-say and one directly from a physicist stating that they were warned that if they published their experimental findings that supported the claims of F & P they would be fired.

An unrecognized narrator states “It has been estimated that 250 miles of [train] coal cars could be replaced by as little as one pick-up truck full of heavy water. The daily waste of a one thousand megawatt cold fusion plant would be approximately 150 grams of helium which is harmless compared to some 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and other wastes produced by a fossil fuel plant.” Dr. M. Srinivason, Babba Atomic-Research of India, who was one of those to provide early confirmation of the F & P experiments, states “The investments required are much smaller.”

Mallove states “I think the electric power grid will absolutely whither away. I think automobiles, trucks, trains, planes; all forms of transportation; will use this new powerful energy source…. The fossil fuel age is about to end.”

Dr. Stanley Pons: “Without some morals or something to believe in on this planet, be it god or science or whatever you truly believe in, what do you have? What do you have? What reason do you have to survive? What reason do you have to go on? We did nothing wrong. We made no mistakes in our observations. We made no mistakes.”

The investigative team that made this film concludes that there was and continues a conspiracy to silence and squelch the research into and development of CF.

Regards, Chip

[Lazarus Long]

The concept of Cold fusion is viable but the name is misleading. The process isn´t cold, it is just balanced. Energy output is in photons as opposed to predominately ergs of thermal energy. If the output is balanced and the product channeled such that the resulting energy is not greater then the ability to process it then the result is perceived to be "cold". That is not necessarily the case at a subatomic level but the practical result is the that it does not result in an uncontrolled release of thermal energy in either an uncontrolled fusion reaction or even a thermal chain reaction that requires significant cooling and thermal transfer just to keep the materials involved from melting down.

The problem with cold fusion and the reason that I have personally refused to pursue my own work in this field is the realization that humans can convert the relatively benign microatomic reactors to weapons tech with the simple expediency of " short circuiting" and this would allow the creation of a whole new generation of extremely small and powerful weapons that at the present time would only contribute to further social destabilization.

I am afraid power is the ultimate drug for all too many people still and I for one won´t act as the pusher.

[Chip]

Hmmm, interesting Lazarus. I've never heard any one stating that this technology had the potential to be turned into weapons. The process seems to lead to slow and small scale release of the heat involved. Still, I suppose such is possible for any potential tool. Build a house with a hammer or conk someone over the head with it

I hear you concerning the possible misnomer of "cold." In the film, researchers do state the amount of heat energy released does seem to be proper for the amount of helium produced and is similar to hot fusion expectations. The main anamoly is that the other radiations appear to be missing as would be expected from hot fusion theory.

Regards, Chip

[Limitless]

The problem with cold fusion and the reason that I have personally refused to pursue my own work in this field is the realization that humans can convert the relatively benign microatomic reactors to weapons tech with the simple expediency of " short circuiting" and this would allow the creation of a whole new generation of extremely small and powerful weapons that at the present time would only contribute to further social destabilization.  

I am afraid power is the ultimate drug for all too many people still and I for one won´t act as the pusher.

With all due respect, Lazarus, isn't this a view that clearly flies in the face of progress? Pardon the rhetorical question, but isn't the very concept of "Life-extension" a risk in itself?

How can one want nanotechnology, and yet reject something as simplistic as cold fusion? If you want to get technical, couldn't nanotechnology itself be very capable of mass-destruction? Think about the scenarios. A group of "Nanobots", programmed to kill their host after entering it. These "Nanobots" could be inserted into, say, the President Bush's morning glass of orange juice, and could kill him before anyone had figured out what was happening. ( [hmm] Not that I'd miss him, from my nest here in Toronto.) It's quite feasible, really, and could be executed on a larger-scale.

Another, more obvious argument, is that dangerous weapons already exist, and a more-convenient form of these weapons would not necessarily: 1-harm more people, or 2-make an attack more likely. They could even be used to deter some attacks.

In closing, don't the emissions from coal-fired generating stations kill many more people than the odd terrorist-attack? This, in itself, should be reason enough to pursue cold fusion. The world could also become more-stable, not less, if technologies such as cold-fusion decrease the West's dependency on fossil fuels, many of which come from the Middle-East.

[Lazarus Long]

I didn't say I would keep such tech from being developed by others, I only said that I decided that what I was discovering was of such potential threat to social stability that it is my right as creator to destroy the work.

If I see social progress that demonstrates sufficient maturity perhaps I will change my mind, and if I live long enough perhaps I will have a chance to, but social progress doesn't require technical progress and in fact the reverse is arguable.

I also feel that one viable use of nanobots is for total global weather modification, no one to date has answered my simple question regarding this application of the technology that I refuse to explain too much further: Who will control the technology? It is not possible for it to be individually controlled and which government shall be trusted with such dominion over all others?

Yes, the advancing technology forces any responsible individual to start asking not only "what if" questions but "when" should such tech be introduced?

Some technologies are inherently destabilizing and require social and individual behavioral standards to be reasonably high in order to be kept from being hazardous to large scale populations. History is rife with examples.

As Bob often laments we are not yet a very advanced level of civilization and the measure of such advance is not just a technological one. I see little to no social advance of today's First Worlders over Roman Citizens of two thousand years ago. Few if any social concepts are significantly improved since then despite the vast polemics that have been entered into text.

[bobdrake12]

As Bob often laments we are not yet a very advanced level of civilization and the measure of such advance is not just a technological one. I see little to no social advance of today's First Worlders over Roman Citizens of two thousand years ago.

Lazarus Long,

Let the power go off for a couple days in a major city and many times the National Guard needs to be activated. [ph34r]

Question: Was it that bad in ancient Rome? [?]

Answer: Ancient Rome didn't have electrical power.

bob

[Malpoet]

There is little evidence for social progress among human beings, but technological progress is providing the basis by which human capabilities may be massively extended.

The production, or perhaps more accurately the controlled release, of vast quantities of energy is necessary for many of the coming stages of development into a more capable and less destructive post human form.

Of course there are dangers. The example given by Bob about electricity is valid, but overall it has been a technology for great good. Biological, Chemical and nuclear weapons are already easily capable of destroying all higher life forms on earth. The development of new energy technologies will increase the possibility of progress to a much greater extent than increasing risk of destruction.

[Lazarus Long]

Yes... but the technology is not the ultimate measure of social advance, our practices and quality of existence are.

I have lived in the highest level of technological comfort and alone upon a desert island. When I was living by means of catching conch I didn't find the fact that I had flown my own small plane into the wilderness of the Caribean a contradiction and I didn't miss the high tech world I had left behind so very much. I relished the simple and fragile world in which I found myself and insured that when I left it was not harmed for my passage. In fact it was cleaner then when I had found it.

"It is not only by the questions we have answered that progress may be measured, but also by those we are still asking."
--Freda Adler

To paraphrase what I am saying, a coat on a dog does not make the dog a citizen, or even more advanced then its feral cousins. Socializing is a process of domestication but being a domestic is not an inherent advance over being free and wild. Much of what is sold as advanced tech is garbage, trivial, and worse then unneeded, it is a product of a consumerist religion that is yielding as much harm, if not more than good.

We are mortgaging a future by building an environmental debt that we will be hard pressed to pay off.

“We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.”
--William James

"It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.”
--Machiavelli