On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:55:27 -0700 (PDT), dlzc
cox.net> wrote:
>Dear Antares 531:
>
>On Aug 18, 7:58Â am, Antares 531
swbell.net> wrote:
>...>> A controlled reliable means for cold hydrogen fusion
>> would solve most of the world's fuel/energy problems,
>> but how can this ever be accomplished?
>
>It can't. If it could occur, Nature would have done it. The
>coloumbic barrier keeping positve charges apart is too high to have
>cold fusion. And were this not so, we would not be alive to have this
>discussion.
>
David, I tend to agree with you on this, but I still have some slight
level of hope. What I'm saying is that nature may be producing cold
hydrogen fusion out in deep space, but we have not observed or proven
this, yet. Some means for Coulomb tunneling might exist that we
haven't yet caught on to.
Also, there are many things that humans have been able to do that
nature never accomplished. Human intervention may be able to take
nature on beyond anything that has or will happen without human
intervention. Nature never built an incandescent light bulb, digital
computer, etc. Nature never processed raw hydrocarbons through an
engine to do work...that sort of thing.
>Additionally, fusion of any sort will release *hosts* of neutrons,
>which will make materials around them radioactive. The expectation is
>that once we have fusion power plants, they will move from facility to
>facility, returning to the first facility after a few years... after
>the radiation has decayed down enough to recycle the facility. Sort
>of like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.
>
>> We shouldn't give up on this and quit studying and
>> searching for answers. If there ever is a break-
>> through it may turn out to be something so simple
>> that we have all overlooked it throughout the years.
>
>No one is giving up. Cold fusion experiments have been thoroughly
>researched, and found to have been mistakes in bookkeeping. But lots
>of people will throw money at any Rube Goldeberg idea... regardless of
>how much sense it really makes.
>
>David A. Smith
>
Truer words were never spoken, but on the other hand, people thought
the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth, at one
time. In fact, many people of his days thought Columbus would surely
sail over the edge of the earth and drop into that vast unknowable
chasm if he persisted in his quest for a way to sail around the world.
Are we really very far ahead of these people in our thinking when it
comes to processes like controlled cold hydrogen fusion?
If there are a thousand physicists working on cold fusion, they may
find a way to accomplish this in the next hundred years or so, if we
are still here as a functioning society. If 100 thousand of us would
give it all we can muster in terms of thought experiments, and toss
our ideas back and forth, perhaps we can get to the goal post in the
next 10 years or so.
Gordon
