Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Cold fusion/Ongoing controversy

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The 1989 DOE panel said that it was not possible to state categorically that cold fusion has been convincingly either proved or disproved. The skepticism towards cold fusion results from 3 issues: the lack of consistently reproducible results, the absence of nuclear products in quantities consistent with the excess heat, and the lack of a mainstream theoretical mechanism.[1]

Reproducibility of the result:
The cold fusion researchers presenting their review document to the 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion said that the observation of excess heat has been reproduced, that it can be reproduced at will under the proper conditions, and that many of the reasons for failure to reproduce it have been discovered.[2] Despite the assertions of these researchers, most reviewers stated that the effects are not repeatable.[3]

In 1989, the DoE panel said: "Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary. As a result, it is difficult convincingly to resolve all cold fusion claims since, for example, any good experiment that fails to find cold fusion can be discounted as merely not working for unknown reasons."[4]

Nuclear products
If the excess heat were generated by the fusion of 2 deuterium nuclei, the most probable outcome would be the generation of either a tritium nucleus and a proton, or a 3He and a neutron. The level of neutrons, tritium and 3He actually observed in Fleischmann-Pons experiment have been well below the level expected in view of the heat generated, implying that these fusion reactions cannot explain it. If the excess heat were generated by the fusion of 2 deuterium nuclei into 4He, a reaction which is normally extremely rare, gamma rays and helium would be generated. Again, insufficient levels of helium and gamma rays have been observed to explain the excess heat.[5]


Theoretical mechanisms:
Another issue is that current theories describing conventional "hot" nuclear fusion cannot explain how a cold fusion reaction could occur at relatively low temperatures, and that there is currently no accepted theory to explain cold fusion.[6][7] The 1989 DoE panel said: "Nuclear fusion at room temperature, of the type discussed in this report, would be contrary to all understanding gained of nuclear reactions in the last half century; it would require the invention of an entirely new nuclear process", but it also recognized that the lack of a satisfactory explanation cannot be used to dismiss experimental evidence.[8]

Cold fusion observations are contrary to the conventional physics of nuclear fusion in several ways :

  • The average density of deuterium atoms in the palladium rod seems vastly insufficient to force pairs of nuclei close enough for fusion to occur according to mechanisms known to mainstream theories. The average distance is approximately 0.17 nanometers, a distance at which the attractive strong nuclear force cannot overcome the Coulomb repulsion. Deuterium atoms are closer together in D2 gas molecules, which do not exhibit fusion.[9]
  • There is no known mechanism that would release fusion energy as heat instead of radiation within the relatively small metal lattice[10]. Robert F. Heeter said that the direct conversion of fusion energy into heat is not possible because of energy and momentum conservation and the laws of special relativity.[11]
Cold fusion researchers have proposed various speculative theories[12] to explain the reported observations, but none has received mainstream acceptance. Because the process may not be fusion, they prefer to call it "low energy nuclear reaction"[13], still insisting that it is nuclear.

Contents

[edit] Comments

  • As a general comment before I head out for the night, there are far too few sources for this. Please ignore any referencing errors (as noted under subsection References) due to the Lead and History split. I would also like to see revisions to the final three bullets, rewritten into sentences and to fix any lingering fragment issues. seicer | talk | contribs 06:24, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What sort of cite is possible for "Such ideas run counter to mainstream physical theories"?

I have previously moved the reference to the Storms book earlier in this paragraph. I felt that making the Storms book the citation for "Such ideas run counter..." suggested that the Storms book contained a description of how various CF theories were at odds with the mainstream. It doesn't. Now this sentence is tagged as needing a citation. There is a problem here that a sufficiently bogus theory will not receive peer-reviewed debunking. I think it is better to phrase this claim in the negative, as we do earlier in the section, by saying no CF theory has received mainstream acceptance. That could be disproved by appropriate citations to mainstream acceptance, but wouldn't place the impossible burden of finding mainstream analysis of an infinity of possible non-theories.

As a strawman proposal, I'm rewriting the sentence as I indicate. JohnAspinall (talk) 03:18, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Feel free to edit and we can work it towards consensus. seicer | talk | contribs 04:06, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
The sentence you propose is fine with me. It would be hard to challenge it ! Pcarbonn (talk) 16:14, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Julian Schwinger comments

I have removed the Julian Schwinger comments. While he is a Nobel prize winner, he does not appear to be an expert on cold fusion, or on the history of science. Also, the comments, as they were presented in the article, were misleading. Early microchip studies and early high-temperature superconductivity were rapidly confirmed after their announcements by outside laboratories, while PF-style cold fusion has not been confirmed almost 19 years after public announcements.

Schwinger is highly notable. He has written at least a couple CF papers, and no doubt would have written many more if he lived longer. Considering his stance on CF, deleting him from the article is certainly ironic and pretty much confirms his points. ObsidianOrder (talk) 09:00, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Can we cite his papers on CF into the article as a compromise? seicer | talk | contribs 14:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm fine with citations, but references should be to original unedited versions.JohnAspinall (talk) 17:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology?

"The cold fusion researchers who presented their review document to the 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion..." I presume there is an explanation for this in the archives, but I don't have time at the moment to go through them---why is that mouthful repeated over and over? It's really irritating. Tenebrous (talk) 22:13, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

This discussion should take place in the Talk:Cold fusion page. The answer to your question is this: because this is a controversial article, it is best to state who said what about CF. If you can find a shorter way to say it precisely, be welcome. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)